I always wake up sweaty and shaking, heart pounding like I’ve just sprinted up ten flights of stairs.
The fact that my instruments are now acting like my dreams are contagious?
Yeah. Love that for me.
I straighten, dusting my gloved hands off on my cargo pants, and look over the site one more time. Rebar forests stab up from half-poured foundations. Plastic sheeting flaps in the wind. A forgotten coffee cup lies on its side near a stack of cinder blocks, its contents long frozen.
Just one more walk-through. One more look at the crack.
Then I can write the email that’s basically “hey, maybe don’t build a million-dollar cul-de-sac over an unstable void, just a thought” and go home.
I take three steps toward the fissure.
And stop.
Because I’m not alone.
Someone is there, at the very edge of the fault.
He wasn’t there ten seconds ago. I would swear on my geology textbooks he wasn’t there.
But now? He’s just there.
Tall. Broad-shouldered. Dark coat whipping around his legs in the wind like he stepped off some dramatic movie poster.
Pale blond hair, almost white, long on top but cut to the nape of his neck in the back. Pale brows to match. Skin like carved alabaster, sharp jaw, straight nose, mouth that looks like it forgot how to smile sometime around the Renaissance.
He’s beautiful.
In that severe, imposing, probably a supervillain kind of way.
He’s staring down into the crack, one hand braced on his thigh, the other pressed flat to the broken asphalt like he’s listening. Really listening.
Something in my chest tightens.
He feels big. Important.
Like those eyes from my dreams got up, stole a body, and walked onto my job site.
“Nah,” I whisper. “Nope. Absolutely not.”
Still, my boots crunch forward, gravel and broken tar underfoot. Professional mode slides in front of the panic like a shield.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I call out. “That fault’s still active.”
* * *
I ask a few more questions.
He just stares.
Large. Imposing. Gorgeous in that completely unattainable way.
“Okay, Big Guy,” I murmur. “Do you speak? Or are you just here to commune with the asphalt?”
He lifts his head.
Our gazes lock.
